When renowned film director Péter Gárdos wrote the story, he intended it as a film script, but eventually he made it into a novel. “Fever at Dawn,” the love story of two Holocaust survivors―the author’s parents―has ever since sold in more than 20 territories.

Örkény brought something radically new to literature by creating fantastic realism, which appeared to be the only valid and viable formal solution to fit a reality that had turned completely fantastic and absurd. Behind each of the almost Dadaistic situations he depicts, we sense the workings of history.

"What makes one a writer? Probably it is not being locked up, because then we would be chock full of writers, but undoubtedly, for someone who does not want to be a writer but ends up becoming one, like me, such an event can prove crucial."